Shakespeare and national culture

Shakespeare continues to feature in the construction and refashioning of national cultures and identities in a variety of forms. There is, and was, a German Shakespeare (East and West); there is the contested legacy of a colonial Shakespeare in former British possessions; there is the post-national Shakespeare who has become the focus of debates concerning multiculturalism. Shakespeare has often been co-opted to serve nationalism yet it has also served to contest and transform it in complex and contradictory ways: The examples are legions.